NAPLAN: Still 'napalm' to some

By Janel Shorthouse and Annie Gaffney

If you're a parent, the acronym might strike terror into your heart, not to mention your child's. Now in its seventh year, more than 200,000 Queensland children are set to sit the national literacy and numeracy tests this week.

To kick off, the Australian Greens spokesperson for Schools Senator Penny Wright called for the tests to be moved to the beginning of the school year to avoid cramming and excessive coaching of students; they also want school rankings removed from the Myschool website.

Associate Professor in education Dr Michael Nagel from the University of the Sunshine Coast has also spoken out - he says it doesn't achieve its intended purpose.

"It's prophetic. If you type NAPLAN into a word document it comes up in auto spell-check as napalm, so I think that says it all," said Dr Nagel.

"For the most part we have been doing diagnostic testing and that's not a bad thing, but how we do it now is terrible.

"We do know that for the most part that one of the biggest determinates of how well kids will do in NAPLAN is postcode. So kids who grow up in higher socio-demographic areas typically do much better. Not least because they have more resources but because we have parents giving them more tutoring or getting extra materials.

"And that's not the intent. The intent of any diagnostic measures should be to see where a child is at, and to identify what help they need.

"Because we do have benchmarks for where kids should be at, but comparing classrooms and schools is totally inappropriate."

He thinks moving NAPLAN to earlier in the year is "not a bad idea".

"Do it at the start of the year, but let's make sure we give feedback straight away, so teachers and parents can see where students and children are at; and let's forget about this whole thing about comparing schools. It serves no purpose whatsoever."

Hinders learning

Speaking with teachers and parents, Dr Nagel says the same concerns are raised.

"The most common thing that comes up with teachers and parents are just how stressed they are about it, and just how stressed kids are about it," said Dr Nagel.

"If we're stressing so many kids about this - why do we bother doing it - stress actually hinders learning it doesn't help."

He also agrees the Myschool website should be taken down.

"I think at the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with trying to determine where a child is at in terms of benchmark literacy and numeracy, so we have some idea of how to help them. But having a website where people can go to; it's data with no real intent, other than to create a situation where it's actually misleading to be honest."

Lost classroom time

Dr Nagel says valuable classroom time is being used to prep students for NAPLAN.

"NAPLAN is now held as an indicator of school success. I've heard of a school that had a boot camp for NAPLAN. So we've taken away from some great learning by spending time on this and that's not supposed to happen," said Dr Nagel.

"The intent is not to do that; it's not to prepare kids for some standardised measure. It should be, bring the kids in, let them do this, and let's see where they are."

He says it has also encroached on school curriculum

"It's become very competitive and parents look at it and think it's a marker of a school and it really isn't. It's a snapshot. It really does not indicate what a school culture is like. If parents want to know what a school is about, they need to visit a school and see what happens there."

NAPLAN - The future

Teaching the teachers of the future, Dr Nagel says he encourages graduates to be wary of its application.

"It's a context [new teachers] have to deal with and the biggest thing they have to know is to make students feel comfortable and relaxed. Often that's difficult because there's this blanket approach of everyone in a room, with no stimulus, and it can be really stressful for kids.

"So the most important thing is not to put too much onus on it because really in the greater scheme of things it's a very small determinate of what a child knows, let alone what a school does."